Weinstein Retrial Bogs Down Over Whose Claims Get Aired to Jury

Harvey Weinstein’s New York retrial has prosecutors and defense attorneys clashing over what jurors can hear about uncharged claims against Weinstein—the type of material that got his earlier conviction tossed.

The back-and-forth illustrated the sensitivity at the trial over what mentions of uncharged claims get heard by jurors. After New York’s highest court overturned the first verdict for including such claims, defense attorneys are seizing on what they say are examples of uncharged allegations being aired again while the judge emphasizes the limits on talk of such allegations.

Weinstein attorney Arthur Aidala moved for a mistrial Wednesday after a government witness alleging Weinstein sexually assaulted her said she “had no idea” at the time that there “there were other people.”

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Curtis Farber denied the motion but struck the reference to “other people” from the record. Farber also agreed with the defense that the prosecution can’t include accuser Miriam Haley’s mention of “other people” in summations.

“With all due respect to your honor’s power to say, ‘I’m striking that from the record,’ you can’t erase it from their brains,” Aidala told the judge with the jury out of earshot. “She just contaminated this whole jury.”

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Evidence Limits

Earlier Wednesday, attorneys butted heads over a potential mention of other accusers that could come up in Haley’s testimony. Weinstein defense attorneys asked Farber to bar Haley from mentioning that 2017 news reports said Weinstein sexually assaulted other women.

The prosecution said it would only arise in the context of Haley explaining how she decided to speak up about her alleged assault—not as evidence that the uncharged assaults occurred.

Farber agreed Haley could mention the reports in a limited fashion.

Prosecutors are “well aware of limitations I’ve already set on Molineux,” Farber said, referring to the type of “prior bad act” evidence that got Weinstein’s conviction thrown out last year. “They’re not going to go into detail about the allegations other than that there were allegations.”

#MeToo Test

Weinstein is being tried for sex crimes in New York after the state’s highest court overturned his earlier conviction and 23-year sentence. The 2020 guilty verdict was a victory for the #MeToo movement, and activists are eyeing the retrial partly as an indicator of how much the climate has changed. He’s denied the charges.

Prosecutors this time are facing limits to the evidence they can present. The New York Court of Appeals’ 4-3 decision overturning the earlier conviction said the trial judge unlawfully allowed women who weren’t part of the charges against Weinstein to testify to alleged sexual misconduct.

Three women alleging sexual abuse by Weinstein are expected to testify in the retrial. The first such accuser, Haley, took the stand for a second straight day of direct questioning from the prosecution Wednesday. In her testimony, she said Weinstein lunged at her in his apartment in 2006 and forced oral sex on her. “I was saying, ‘no, no, no,’” Haley said.